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Gedackt (also spelled gedeckt) is the name of a family of stops in pipe organ building. They are one of the most common types of organ flue pipe. The name stems from the Middle High German word gedact, meaning "capped" or "covered".
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Gedackt (also spelled gedeckt) is the name of a family of stops in pipe organ building. They are one of the most common types of organ flue pipe. The name stems from the Middle High German word gedact, meaning "capped" or "covered".
The concept of the stopped flute pipe (of which gedackt is a prime example) is almost as old as organ construction. As early as 1600, in Germanic organs, stopped flutes were common additions to the specification. Besides giving a distinct flute-like tone (in contrast to the more open and expressive tone of the diapason, the organ's basic voice) the stopped flutes offer a perfect ensemble stop for making combinations. Stopped flutes like the gedackt are extremely versatile in an organ specification. Certain types of organ stops go in and out of fashion over the centuries, but the stopped flute ranks like the gedackt are always present on instruments of all sizes. Even the very smallest pipe organs frequently have some form of stopped flute in the specification.
Gedackt pipes can be made of either wood or metal, but in modern organ building, and the majority of historical examples, they are made of wood. They are occasionally square, but much more commonly rectangular in cross-section, the mouth being on the narrow side of the pipe. The mouth has a high cut-up (height to width ratio) to produce the fluty tone. Gedackt is a stopped pipe, as its name implies. Stopped pipes need be only 1/2 of unison length to produce unison pitch, however, it is common for many stopped ranks of pipes to be built as "open" pipes in the highest sounding notes. An open pipe, such as an 8 ft (2.4 m) Diapason, needs to be eight feet long at low "C" on the keyboard, but the capped gedackt of similar pitch need be only four feet long at that point, making the stop very compact and economical to build. As in most wood pipes, the foot, block (which contains the windway), mouthpiece and cap are hardwood. The body of the pipe is usually hardwood, but can also be built of conifer or other woods, especially in large pipes.
The gedackt produces a moderately soft, bland, flute-like tone, invaluable for basic ensemble sound in the pipe organ. The stopped design eliminates many high overtones, leaving the classic sound of the gedackt, which blends seamlessly with almost all other stops. It is similar in sound to the bourdon, but is usually softer and somewhat sweeter in tone. The bourdon's heavier construction and square-walled pipes gives it a more pronounced and weighty tone.
The gedackt's strong fundamental tone is never lost, but is absorbed into combination, making a new "whole", rather than standing alone as a distinct sound in combination with other stops. Yet, used as a solo voice, the gedackt has a contemplative and relaxing sound in its lower registers, and a singing and plaintive tone in the treble notes. Large organs will sometimes have a gedackt especially voiced for solo work, frequently labeled as a "Lieblich" ("lovely") gedackt or "Singengedackt" on the stop knob. Gedackts can be built in all pitch ranges used on the organ, but they are most common at 8 ft; and 4 ft; pitch in the manuals, and 16 ft; pitch in the pedals.
It is of interest that two very small gedackt pipes, fitted with bellows, are what produce the common cuckoo bird call on the striking of a traditional mechanical cuckoo clock.
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre, volume, and construction throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
An organ stop is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; each can be "on", or "off".
Scaling is the ratio of an organ pipe's diameter to its length. The scaling of a pipe is a major influence on its timbre. Reed pipes are scaled according to different formulas than for flue pipes. In general, the larger the diameter of a given pipe at a given pitch, the fuller and more fundamental the sound becomes.
A pedalboard is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. A pedalboard has long, narrow lever-style keys laid out in the same semitone scalar pattern as a manual keyboard, with longer keys for C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, and shorter, raised keys for C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯ and A♯. Training in pedal technique is part of standard organ pedagogy in church music and art music.
A theatre organ is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films, from the 1900s to the 1920s.
A flue pipe is an organ pipe that produces sound through the vibration of air molecules, in the same manner as a recorder or a whistle, in a pipe organ. Air under pressure is driven through a flue and against a sharp lip called a labium, causing the column of air in the pipe to resonate at a frequency determined by the pipe length. Thus, there are no moving parts in a flue pipe. This is in contrast to reed pipes, whose sound is driven by beating reeds, as in a clarinet.
An organ pipe is a sound-producing element of the pipe organ that resonates at a specific pitch when pressurized air is driven through it. Each pipe is tuned to a note of the musical scale. A set of organ pipes of similar timbre comprising the complete scale is known as a rank; one or more ranks constitutes a stop.
The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world, based on the number of playing pipes, the number of ranks and its weight. The Wanamaker Organ is located within a spacious 7-story Grand Court at Macy's Center City and is played twice a day Monday through Saturday. The organ is featured at several special concerts held throughout the year, including events featuring the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ Festival Chorus and Brass Ensemble.
Bourdon, bordun, or bordone normally denotes a stopped flute type of flue pipe in an organ characterized by a dark tone, strong in fundamental, with a quint transient but relatively little overtone development. Its half-length construction makes it especially well suited to low pitches, and economical as well. The name is derived from the French word for 'bumblebee' or 'buzz'.
A positive organ is a small, usually one-manual, pipe organ that is built to be more or less mobile. It was common in sacred and secular music between the 10th and the 18th centuries, in chapels and small churches, as a chamber organ and for the basso continuo in ensemble works. The smallest common kind of positive, hardly higher than the keyboard, is called chest or box organ and is especially popular nowadays for basso continuo work; positives for more independent use tend to be higher.
Chorus is an audio effect that occurs when individual sounds with approximately the same time, and very similar pitches, converge. While similar sounds coming from multiple sources can occur naturally, as in the case of a choir or string orchestra, it can also be simulated using an electronic effects unit or signal processing device.
Doncaster Minster, formally the Minster and Parish Church of St George, is the Anglican minster church of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. It is a grade I listed building and was designed by architect designer George Gilbert Scott. The church was built in 1854–1858 to replace an earlier building destroyed by fire. It is an active place of worship and has a Schulze organ, a ring of eight bells, and a celebrated clock by Dent. The church is one of two parish churches to have minster status in South Yorkshire. The other is the minster church of Rotherham.
This article describes the process and techniques involved in the tuning of a pipe organ. Electronic organs typically do not require tuning.
A Tibia Clausa is a type of pipe organ pipe. It is a large-scale, stopped wood flute pipe, usually with a leathered lip. The rank was invented by Robert Hope-Jones. Tibia Clausas provides the basic foundation tone of the organ with few overtones or harmonics. The Tibia Clausa is arguably the most important rank of pipes in a theatre pipe organ, with some organs having as many as 5. The stop shares similarities with the Bourdon and the Gedackt found in some church pipe organs. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Tibia Clausa was sometimes used as an alternate name for Doppelflöte. Most tibias are made from wood, as by Wurlitzer etc., although examples of metal tibias may be found made by the John Compton Organ Company.
The pipe organ is played from an area called the console or keydesk, which holds the manuals (keyboards), pedals, and stop controls. In electric-action organs, the console is often movable. This allows for greater flexibility in placement of the console for various activities. Some very large organs, such as the van den Heuvel organ at the Church of St. Eustache in Paris, have more than one console, enabling the organ to be played from several locations depending on the nature of the performance.
Registration is the technique of choosing and combining the stops of a pipe organ in order to produce a particular sound. Registration can also refer to a particular combination of stops, which may be recalled through combination action. The registration chosen for a particular piece will be determined by a number of factors, including the composer's indications, the time and place in which the piece was composed, the organ the piece is played upon, and the acoustic environment within which the organ resides.
On classical French organs, the plein jeu is a principal-based plenum registration. It includes the Montres, Bourdons, Prestants and Doublettes and the Fournitures and Cymbales. The classical French organ also allows for a reed-based registration; the grand jeu, which used a loud combination of reed stops in homophonic sections of larger pieces or standalone préludes.
St Mary's Church is the Church of England parish church of Haddenham, Buckinghamshire It is a Grade I listed building.
Casavant Frères Ltée. Opus 1841 is a pipe organ built by the famous Casavant Frères of Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. The organ was first completed in 1911 as Casavant Brothers - Opus 452 for St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church at 40 Bentinck Street, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. St. Andrew's later became St. Andrew's United Church and is now the Highland Arts Theatre.
The Robb Wave Organ is an electronic organ invented in 1927 by Canadian inventor F. Morse Robb in Belleville, Ontario. It uses a unique type of tone wheel synthesis to reproduce pipe organ tones and is one of the first electronic organs ever made. While not as commercially successful as its main competitor, the Hammond organ, The Robb Wave Organ predates the Hammond in conception, patents, and manufacture and release for public sale.